Leonard Pitts Jr.
Fri, January 14, 2022
Dear white conservatives:
When you’re right, you’re right. And you are definitely right about that quote from Martin Luther King.
When he stood at the temple of Lincoln in 1963 and declared his dream “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” he surely spoke a word for the ages. Your fondness for that word has not gone unnoticed.
How could it? You invoke that line all the time — all ... the ... time — to show that King, had he not been murdered by a white supremacist in 1968, would have stood in solidarity with your social and political agenda.
Most recently, you’ve used it in opposing the teaching of critical race theory. You use it so much that a body might think you couldn’t name another King quote if the survival of the human species depended on it.
Well, did you know Martin Luther King said other things? It’s true! In a spirit of public service and in celebration of his birthday, here are a few of them. You’ll be happy to know that they support your right-wing agenda exactly as much as your favorite quote does.
For instance, use this one to show that King would have shared your love of capitalism:
“Something is wrong with capitalism. Maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. We must develop programs that will drive the nation to the realization of the need for a guaranteed annual income.”
And like you, he surely would’ve condemned reparations and affirmative action:
“A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”
Certainly he didn’t believe there was any such thing as white privilege:
“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a ... mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”
And he likely would have opposed ending the filibuster:
“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.”
Surely King would have sided with the makers over the takers:
“This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”
And he would’ve shared your contempt for Black Lives Matter:
“I had seen police brutality with my own eyes and watched Negroes receive the most tragic injustice in the court. All of these things had done something to my growing personality.”
Try this quote to prove that King, like you, thought there was no such thing as systemic racism:
“For the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country even today is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.”
And if all that seems a lot to remember, well, it’s summed up in something he said on the last night of his life. He was a tired and frustrated man by then after 13 years of marches, speeches and death threats, struggling with a nation that refused to venerate its own lofty ideals. And he told an audience in Memphis:
“All we say to America is: Be true to what you said on paper.”
How Americans are tarnishing Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy for their self interest | Hill
LeBron Hill, Nashville Tennessean
Thu, January 13, 2022, 8:08 PM·3 min read
When I was in the first grade, attending Jack T. Farrar Elementary School in Tullahoma, my music teacher, Mrs. Majors, would take the lesson time in January to tell the class the story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.
She would start her narration with setting the scene and told us that, at the time, MLK felt compelled to go to Memphis to continue his push for racial justice. Her voice would then change into a deep, sinister cadence when she started describing James Earl Ray's evil intentions to kill King.
Mrs. Majors, a white teacher, told that story every year and I would listen to it each year like it was the first time I'd heard it.
I grew up thinking of Dr. King as a hero, just like Clark Kent and Peter Parker, who put their own ideals and desires aside for the common good.
Years later, I toured Dr. King's birth home in Atlanta and felt like I was getting to see the origin story of a superhero.
I remembered Dr. King as a superhero.
America has forgotten MLK's message and created its own
Americans all have the right to remember Dr. King the way they want to, but in the last couple of years, I've noticed that his quotes, writings and speeches have been construed to fit a political or social agenda, most of the time opposite of what Dr. King fought and stood for.
Robin Steenman presents at 'Let's Talk Wit & Wisdom," and event put on by the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty. Steenman is chair of the newly formed chapter
A recent example is Green Bay Packers' Quarterback Aaron Rodgers misusing Dr. King's quotes to push COVID-19 misinformation.
"I would add this to the mix as an aside, but the great MLK said you have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense," Rodgers said last November.
And it's not just his quotes that are being misused.
Bernice King, the youngest daughter of the civil rights icon, took to Twitter on Jan. 5 to express her frustration with the nonprofit political group Moms for Liberty's sponsored American Dream Conference Friday and Saturday in Franklin, using her father's image in a digital invitation.
Last November, the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty submitted a complaint against several books being used in a curriculum they believed violated Tennessee's new anti-critical race theory law , including a one about Dr. King, "Martin Luther King Jr. and the "March on Washington" by Frances E. Ruffin. The Tennessee Department of Education refused to investigate the complaint.
Bernice King is constantly forced to defend the work of her father. If we truly care about King's work, she wouldn't have to do so.
MLK's spirit has become politically focused
Quite frankly, we're all at fault for taking an MLK quote and posting it to our social media platforms in hopes of getting our point across. But what I find most appalling is the sheer lack of acknowledgment of what he went through.
Bernice King speaks during the release of Lee Sentell's Civil Rights Trail book in June.
During the 1960s civil rights era, Dr. King was considered a communist in many circles. Dr. King was labeled the "most dangerous" Black man in America in a 17,000-page FBI file.
I am so disgusted by the appropriation of Dr. King that I have considered ignoring the federal holiday in honor of his birthday.
If you do celebrate Martin Luther King Day on Monday, remember that in America, we have a habit of taking our heroes and martyrs and sanitizing them in our current climate without remembering what they really stood for.
If we don't stop this inauthentic and disingenuous use of Dr. King's legacy, we will tarnish the work of a man who marched in hostile streets, endured immoral arrest and jail time, and ultimately died for fighting for the civil rights of all Americans.
LeBron Hill is an opinion columnist for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee and the curator of the Black Tennessee Voices newsletter. Feel free to contact him at LHill@gannett.com or 615-829-2384. Find him on Twitter at @hill_bron or Instagram at @antioniohill12.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Martin Luther King Jr. Day: How Americans are tarnishing MLK's legacy
Muhammad Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King (File Photo)
Yesterday the world of sports and the rest of the world should have taken time off and saluted that man from Atlanta.
That man they called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
If he had lived that man from Atlanta would have been 46 year old yesterday.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived, worked, and died for all of us.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped bring about progress in sports and all other walks of life.
Somewhere up there Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. must have been smiling Tuesday night when he looked on the Phoenix area in the Valley of the Sun and saw two black men—K.C. Jones of the winning East All-Stars and Al Attles of the West All-Stars coaching both teams.
Naturally, this was a first like so many of the firsts Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought about in his much too short life on this planet.
It must have brought an equal amount of joy to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s heart earlier this season when former Grambling State University star Matt Reed helped quarterback the Birmingham Americans to the WFL title in the city where he and Mrs. Rosa Parks et al started the successful bus boycott.
A boycott that brought the walls of segregation and discrimination tumbling down.
There is a lot of progress in sports today that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped bring about because of his successful and relentless campaign to help all Americans share in that elusive American dream.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. … had a dream … a dream that blacks would someday be judged not by the color of their skin but by the contents of their character.
I’m sure Dr. Martin Luther King would agree the world of sports has come as close to making this a reality as any other area of American life.
The world will long remember that another man from Atlanta via Alabama, Hank Aaron. Broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record in 1974.
And that Frank Robinson became the first black major league manager in history.
And that the St. Louis Cardinals’ Lou Brock broke Maury Willis’ all-time stolen bases record with 118.
Others will remember that Muhammad Ali upset George Foreman and the world to regain the world’s heavyweight championship.
But most of all the world should remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because he tried to help us all … and he was truly a prince of peace during our lifetime.
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